Web browsing is an increasingly popular activity in business and personal settings, and with the growth of network-connected devices such as personal computers, web-capable mobile phones and tablets has come increased demand for the provision of media over the web. For example, users may desire to conduct web-based audio and video conferencing, buy or rent movies or television shows over the web, view video or animation encoded for Adobe Flash, listen to streaming radio stations, or even play games with users around the world via the Internet.
When virtual or cloud-based desktops are used, web browsing may be virtualized along with other hosted applications. That is, a browser application may run in a hosted virtual desktop (HVD), or run as a hosted virtual application (HVA) while the browser window is displayed to a user on a remote client endpoint device such as a computer or mobile phone. Virtualized browsing presents a set of unique problems in that media such as streaming media may be more difficult to virtualize than simple text and graphics.